New to photography and newer still to macro. They're both things I've wanted to try for years and when I got a DSLR I was a bit put off macro at first because of the lens prices; I wanted to fill out my kit bag a bit more so far as capability goes, and that meant several lenses for the price of a single macro lens. Well, chance would have it that a colleague's wife is a professional photographer and was selling a Canon 100mm macro for less than half retail price, so I bought it.

It has, thus far, been a real struggle to get to grips with it. For those in the UK that have letterboxes on our doors for mail, you'll understand what I mean when I describe my experience as a letterbox of focus. It's really difficult getting more of the subject in detail. I'm truly perplexed as to how some folks get a whole bee or something that size in focus, let alone down to the size of an ant with good detail.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I feel a million miles away from being able to get the types of images I envisioned and, worst of all, have seen taken with the same lens by others.

The camera I have is the Canon 750D or, for North Americans and perhaps elsewhere, the Rebel T6i. The macro lens is the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM.

Beyond the doom and gloom... I love music and despite my age, I'm an old soul. Love my jazz, swing, blues, classical, opera etc, but really have a varied music taste. BIG sports fan, though oddly I only really follow American sports; LOVE football(especially college), baseball and basketball. I've had to limit myself to football and baseball though because there aren't enough hours in the day.

Work wise I work in a hospital Monday-Friday. I found myself desperate for the weekend to arrive and then ending up wasting it or feeling like I hadn't accomplished anything with the time I had, so I got myself the camera to help get me out more and give me something to focus on(which it most certainly has, while my wallet cries itself to sleep in the corner)._________________Canon 750D/T6i

Hello! Perhaps you had discovered pictures from people who do 'focus stacking', which is a specialized form of photography where a large number of pictures from different focal points are digitally stitched together to give an incredibly sharp picture with great depth of focus.
A single frame shot will generally not do that, but I personally prefer single frames. I don't know what your background is, but a single frame picture taken between f/10 - f/16 aperture gives useful depth of focus. I favor wider apertures (f/10 , f/11) for larger subjects like butterflies and dragonflies, and smaller apertures (f/14, f/16 for small subjects. Apertures smaller than f/16 start to degrade with light diffraction. Or at least I think they do._________________Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

A lot of the success boils down to preparation, and having the right apparatus for the job. Do you have any links to the sort of shots you'd like to be making? I always find that analyzing those in depth gives those great insights into what you yourself need to do to be in the best position to achieve something similar - be it through exif or the writeup with the photo or even mailing the author directly.

Best,

-Johan_________________My extreme-macro.co.uk site, a learning site. Your comments and input there would be gratefully appreciated.